


Shoopuf Love Medley

by dagas isa (dagas_isa)



Category: Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Love Confessions, Romance, Sexual Content, Travel, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-06
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/pseuds/dagas%20isa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On one last night alone, Paine and Rikku struggle with where to define the boundary between friends with benefits and lovers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoopuf Love Medley

Shoopufs depart from the south bank of Moonflow approximately three times a day: once just after dawn, once just after the midday, and the final time just before the sun sets. Shoopufs are not the only means of navigating the geography between Djose and Guadosalam, merely the most convenient. On a dry day, the tributaries usually have at least one traversable point, though the trip over land means walking through dense forest and fiends, and if one's destination happened to be one of the several villages that dotted the shores, there were always locals on their skiffs to bribe for a trip downstream. Of course, relying on the small, human-steered crafts depend on stopping to either switch or rest several times during the journey, while shoopufs tend to walk even while sleeping, even while their hypello handlers take their own breaks. Excepting the airship, currently docked for study at the Al Bhed Engineering Research Center (known pre-Calm as the Yevon Temple at Djose), there is no faster or more scenic way to cross between the northern and southern halves of the Spira than from the high vantage point of a shoopuf’s back.

Plus, no matter how much I would hate to admit it, there’s still some primal, childish joy to be found in riding on the back of an animal that could easily crush a human head with its foot. And yet, staring out onto the water, idly checking the signboards (Lost: Pet Water Flan, answers to Misty, cloudy spot on her left pseudopod), I couldn’t deny the unease that came over me. I held no doubts that Rikku and I would arrive in Guadosalam soonest this way, but even the first pyreflies emerging in the late afternoon sun told me that this trip would have more personal trials of its own.

*

“Ready to ride the shoopuf?” Rikku asks, carrying a small bag of provisions over her shoulders. Her long blond hair is still wet from bathing, and I’m not sure if it’s the breeze or my memory that carries the fragrance of her soap towards me. Not for the first time, I wonder how things between us became so tangled. We were Gullwings, then friends, then friends who occasionally kissed and snuggled (had sex) when body warmth needed shared. And now…we negotiate the line between friends and lovers. Alone and isolated from civilization, we share each other’s companionship easily, but we still go back to the cities—Luca, Killika, Bevelle if we can’t avoid it—to spend some well-needed time apart and to make a point of ever more halfheartedly checking out other women—well, men too in Rikku’s case—because even Rikku knows that for either of us to admit to anything beyond friendship is to put our already successful adventuring arrangement at risk.

Our rules grow increasingly blurry. Once, this trip would hold no cause for nervousness. We’d talk and sleep wrapped up in our blankets, and then share breakfast in the morning. But now, it’s eight hours of time alone with Rikku and unanswered questions, in an enclosed, almost isolated enough space.

The contrast between then and now provides a ghost of an answer to one of those questions: I haven’t always been in love with Rikku.

“Paine?” Rikku waves her free hand in front of my face. “They’re going to sell our shoopuf ride to someone else.”  
I snap back to reality and swipe the fluttering hand away more harshly than intended. “Let’s go.”

“Okay…”

Rikku pays our fare: 500 gil, turmeric and cinnamon from our time in Kilika, and a silver bangle—a tribute to the shoopuf handlers letting us in on such a tight schedule. We step on the boarding elevator in silence, and take our seats on opposite sides of the carriage. As the shoopuf pushes out into the water, I wipe my palms on my shorts and convince myself that it’s only droplets of water and not sweat that are making them damp.

I lean back and sigh at my mental convolutions. This trip already promises to feel longer than the tedium of actually taking the long way around the tributaries.

I look out over the back of the carriage and at the dock retreating in the background. If I spend the trip thinking about other things—potential Guado interview questions ,the price of lentils in Luca, the up and the odd trend of keeping fiends as pets—things might not end in a total mess.

*

For the first leg of the journey, the only sounds our party makes are the slosh of the shoopuf’s downstream walk and the garbled drawl of the hypello as she steers the shoopuf around obstacles—natural and people-made—that populate the crowded south port of the river. Sometimes Rikku opens her mouth as if to say something, but her jaw goes slack and closes before anything other than a high, inquiring “Umm…” comes out.

I don’t encourage her to speak. Instead, I look out over the back of the bench I sit on and watch the water splash on the shoopuf’s ankle, and the large shadow of a fish darting around in the water among the schools of smaller fish. Occasionally my eyes flicker over to Rikku, who makes a point of fussing around in the knapsack, pulling out our supplies—potions, hi-potions, flash bombs—and placing them back in. Occasionally she takes out a needle and thread and makes non-existent repair to places on the sack.

I follow her lead, unsheathing my sword and going over the blade, and taking note of even the most mundane scratches and flaws on my blade. We don’t fight so much anymore—people and fiends rarely venture into the remote places we go—but a poorly maintained sword protects no one’s life.

Sometimes we happen to look up at the same time, and the atmosphere grows even more awkward, as we both try and fail to convince the other that our looks were more flickering glances than attempted gazes.

“How long is this ride, anyway?” I ask, even knowing how long the ride will take, just to have some kind of break in the non-conversation. Then there’s an excuse to look at Rikku. My covert admiration remains easier to hide in words, even if I still risk revealing too much. Laconic is the plan. I let Rikku do most of the talking.

“Overnight, give or take. We’ll have a chance for a couple of rest stops, but we’ll probably arrive around dawn. Rikku shifts, sending the tails of her scarf down her arms, and my fingers flex to play with the tails of the fringe and coincidentally the skin they’ll touch. “I have dinner here, and they provide blankets under the seats to cover up with. Best way to travel short of an airship.”

“Sure.”

“Well, I don’t see you lining up to ride a chocobo all along the river anytime soon.”

I don’t say anything. Rikku gets up and begins to pace as well as one can in the narrow confined space that is a saddle on a shoopuf’s back. I slouch back and close my eyes, trying my best to not watch her legs each time she passes in front of me. Yet, every image of Rikku in my mind is so detailed and vivid, my eyelids might as well be clear. Not good.

She’s annoying. I tell myself to think about that. Her pacing disrupts the shoopuf, and it makes getting into the benches more difficult. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts about her in particular, our previous arrangement has been about being friends who have sex only because going off alone to take care of our urges would get dangerous. That is the only reason I continue to sleep with Rikku. Not because she smells good, or looks beautiful, or for any other nonsensical reason. The more I think about it, the deeper I dig, until I have to open my eyes.

Rikku has stopped, and is now rummaging around beneath the seats. I look over her, out at the sinking sun behind her.

"Here," Rikku's sudden voice disrupts the silence. She holds out one of the woven wool blankets stored in the saddle. "You look cold."

"I'm fine," I say, wrapping the blanket around me all the same. Rikku gives a small smile at that act, though she still looks worried as she wraps one of the other blankets around her like a cape. I keep my eyes focuses on it as Rikku continues to pace, occasionally stopping to look through a bag.

“You hungry?” Rikku says, cutting off her nervous silence at last. She rummages around in her rucksack and picks out a smaller bundle of food and a canteen of water. “It’s pretty much the same we’ve had all week, but it’ll do, right?”

“Thanks.” I accept her offering and open it up. Dried meat, flatbread, rice, and some local cooked vegetables she must have picked up from a vendor before we left.

As we eat, I watch Rikku, who sits across from me, facing west into the sunset. I can’t help it. The orange-colored light shines on her, making her warm, luminous, and inviting, even as her mouth is full of the huge bites she takes out of the flat bread with one hand, and her other spends more time trying not quite successfully to catch the bits of spiced rice and vegetables that threaten to fall off.

“This is kind of—”Rikku hesitates, thinking better than to use the accurate adjective“—nice don’t you think? Just the two of us on the back of a shoopuf having a little sunset picnic while all the pyreflies rise up above us.”

“It’s relaxing.” I substitute another ‘r’ word in place of the correct one. We don’t date, we don’t seduce each other, and we certainly don’t admit to being in love, but if Rikku and I were to go on a nice, relaxing, romantic date somewhere, a picnic on the Moonflow would probably be one of our top choices, and here we are, on an evening cruise. Alone. Together.

“This is our first time crossing the Moonflow like this,” Rikku says. Her fingers unconsciously brush her hair behind her ears. “Usually we’re in the airship for anything longer than a day’s journey.”

Rikku’s right, this is the first time we’ve traveled this path without Yuna or anyone else in our company. Neither of us shies away from travel, but the destinations have been what mattered, not the getting there. A short trip on the airship leads to days or weeks spent down in the southern islands, or in the farthest reaches of Bikanel, or in ruins and apparition of Zanarkand, dozens of destinations at this point, but relatively little journey. We prefer it that way.

And now, a single shoopuf ride. Just a tiny thing when compared to everything else we’ve done together.

I move a bit closer to Rikku. She seems a little startled, but she inches closer to me, until we’re both sitting together, watching the world ahead of us. If I can play cool around her anymore, this would be the time to do it.

Rikku’s hand tugs at my blanket. “So, does this mean you’re not mad at me?”

I shake my head. “No. Not mad. Just thinking about things.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Rikku moves in close enough that our sides touch, and a bit of her radiant heat transfers over to me, and seeking more of it, I open my blanket up, covering her shoulders as well. And Rikku, without needing to be told anything spreads hers across our laps. Her head leans on my shoulder, but other than that we remain mostly separate.

I wonder if Rikku is going to elaborate or ask me to elaborate, but she remains silent, the thoughts shared between us unspoken. When she speaks again, the topic is mercifully unrelated to us whatever that word means these days. “I remember my first time out here. It seems so long ago, like a completely different era. I was piloting a machina, and trying to kidnap Yunie. Man, we got whupped that day.”

“Al Bhed really kidnapped the summoners? I always thought that was a myth.”

“Uh huh. We really didn’t know what else to do at the time. In retrospect, it was totally crazy, but at the time, we couldn’t just stand by and watch. What happened to the summoners wasn’t right. And, Yunie was my cousin, even though we’d never met before, I hated the thought that we might never meet.” Rikku shrugs against me.

“I understand.”

“But the world’s completely changed now. And I wonder sometimes, if we had succeeded and managed to convince Yunie to give up her pilgrimage, how different my life would be.”

“Oh?”

“I’d either be out in the ocean somewhere, trying to salvage goods. Or married to the first guy I liked and stayed locked up in Home with a bunch of kids, you know, if Sin didn’t get to me first. I definitely wouldn’t have seen all the places I’ve been to, or met all these people across Spira, especially as an Al Bhed. I'm sure we wouldn't have been able to travel as freely as we do now.”

“But you know, with all that, what seems like the worst thing about not having the Calm—well other than having a vengeful parasite using a raging sea monster to go on a rampage?”

“Vengeful parasite?”

Rikku ignores my interjection. “I wouldn’t have met you. It’s really scary when I think about how important that's become.”

“Thanks.” My words are sarcastic, but my arm wraps around Rikku’s waist.

“Hey, I mean it. You’re really someone special.” It’s a confession, or at least as close to one as we’ve ever shared. I grow warm, despite the weather. My guard drops a bit. Maybe we could make this work. The question of our relationship has never been a one of reciprocation; we've seen each other in enough bad situations for respect points to be a useless concept, and yet Rikku can say something like that and I can accept it as absolute truth.

By the time I realize that my blush is visible, Rikku’s already on her way to pointing it out. “So you can blush!”

Her teasing snaps me back to the real world and into my role. Cold. Badass. “Rikku…” I give her a warning.

She laughs it off, eyes sparkling and a mischievous smile on her face. “You were blushing. I saw it. Don't deny it.”

"You saw nothing." My hands creep up her bare side, finding that exact right place between waist and hip where she’s most ticklish, and I stroke it, very lightly.

“Paine…” Rikku says with a gasp. Her laughter fills up the empty space around us. I turn towards her, concentrating fully on my attacks. Rikku curls up and kicks her legs out; her feet tangle in the blanket across our laps. She tilts sideways. Her hands grab my wrists in a last-ditch effort to remain balanced, but we topple and crash onto the floor of the howdah together. The ride goes bumpy as she shoopuf jerks and flails. I wrap my arms around Rikku and shelter her with my body. Miraculously, nothing tips over before the shoopuf calms.

“Are yoo ladiesh okay?” our driver calls from the front.

I look down at Rikku, who nods. “We’re fine. Sorry about that,” I call out.

“Pleesh don’t shtartle the shoopuf.”

“Sorry,” we both say, as we wince.

The shoopuf plods along the river, and the jostling calms down to the low, constant plodding we’ve experienced the whole ride. The adrenaline still rushes through me. Rikku still lies below me, frozen except for her mouth opening into a smile. She makes no move to push me off. I know what will happen next if we don’t care to put a stop it. I don’t.

Around us, the pyreflies draw a curtain between us and the world. I lower my head down, until my lips are just a hair apart from her full ones, and just waiting for the right moment to close the distance. “Can we? Please?” Rikku’s heavy breath touches my mouth as she tangles her hands in my hair. The corner of her tongue peeks out as it moistens her lips. Her legs press against mine as she rubs them together.

I catch her eyes, which are easily the most luminous things on the moonflow right now. “As long as you promise to be quiet and not move a bunch,” I say, quieting my voice to match hers. I pull the blanket over us as my leg finds its place between hers, giving her something to grind against. She returns the favor. Her thigh presses against my pubic bone, and the always lingering craving for Rikku’s nearness—her specific nearness—awakens to a full force. “No startling the shoopuf.”

“Very quiet. Right. No startling the big teal water trudger. That would be bad.” Rikku inclines her head, taking the kiss she’s wanted the whole time. I’m glad to give it to her, and more besides as our lips interlock. My hand loosens her top and cups her breasts. Her nipples are already hardened. “Cold?” I ask between kisses, though I’m positive that my smugness does nothing to make my feigned uncertainty seem believable.

“More like turned on.” Rikku grinds against me. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. Week.”

“Oh?” I ask before I push aside the fabric and expose her nipple to the night air. I give it a lick but only to draw out the anticipation until she answers.

“I have a list of things I want to try with you,” Rikku says pushing my head down. I take the hint, and begin to suck, all the while enjoying her warmth and the small shudders transferring between us. She arches into me. “I’m not sure some of them have even been invented.” She gasps.

I lift my head and smirk at her. "You'll have to get busy then."

She pouts. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”

“I thought I said only if you were quiet.”

She wriggles against me. “That rule was only for sexy noises, right? Can we get back to the action now?”

“Bossy,” I smile, taking the time to speak before I give her what we both want. I tease her, using my tongue to start and letting the breeze do the rest. She shivers, and not just from the cold. A rush of power comes over me making my hands and mouth itch to see how much further I can push her.

“You know you like it,” she whispers. Her hands stroke down my back, causing the gooseflesh to raise on my skin as well. I close my eyes and surround myself with Rikku’s scent and her breath rising and falling beneath me. I answer with my mouth, but without words. My hands slide down over the hollows of her hips, stroking her sides and curving up her shoulders before reversing their course. I linger over her breasts. They're small and sensitive and perfect for testing her self-control.

Her breath deepens, and I wonder if she’s going to come before I’ve even gotten my hands below her waist. It would be fun to try, another entry to Rikku’s list of things to do together. Right now, however, calls for something different. My hand touches her thighs. Rikku’s legs relax and spread open, and I can already feel how wet she is—how wet I've made her. My fingers press against her lower lips. Her face, however is where my gaze fixates.

"Please," she mouths as she leans into me. Her body envelopes my fingers and soaks them with her juices. I explore, curling one finger at the entrance of her vagina and sliding it in slowly. In the dim lights of the pyreflies glow and the dying remains of the sun, her eyes close and a smile crosses her face.

"Like that?" I slide down.

Rikku presses into me. I allow myself one quick taste of her pussy, and laugh as she trembles. When I look up again, her expression has transformed. She grimaces now. Her lower lip tucks between her teeth as she tries to prevent her usual noises from forming. I take the challenge. My mouth comes down on her again; my tongue flicks over her clit, while my fingers inside her bring more of her moisture flowing outwards. Rikku tightens her legs around my shoulders. I stabilize her with my free hand.

Little sounds come out of her, as she tries to swallow her reactions. I speed up. My singular focus lies in wanting to test her self-control, and even more wanting to make her lose it as she climaxes. Her breath quickens and her legs start to tremble. Her hands push my head deeper into her muff, but it's the strangled moan and the sudden rush of juices on my fingers that inform me that she's coming. I keep at it, dialing up the intensity, seeing if she'll let out any other sounds. Her legs squeeze around me, and her whole body tenses up, but she manages to catch any other cries that might come out. Instead, she clings to me. Only when she relaxes do I pull away.

"Good?" I ask, lifting my head. I slowly withdraw my fingers from her pussy and hold them up to the pyreflies' light where they glisten.

"I think I'm seeing stars," she gasps, reaching up for me. Her hands are grabby, bringing me in for a kiss and pulling away at my clothes.

"Those are pyreflies," I say when she finally takes her mouth away from mine.

She gives me this look that says "Well, I know that," but she brings me in for another kiss before she nuzzles my neck and gazes up at me. "Did you have fun?"

Did I? Definitely. I can feel the heat just over my thighs, and even without checking, Lady Luck would make a safe bet in guessing that I was almost as wet as Rikku had been. "Maybe."

Rikku rolls down her skirt and props herself up on her elbows. "Well, let's see then. Shorts off, missy."

"What?" My resistance is half-hearted at best, but still I'm more comfortable touching her. It's easier to justify. Yet that gleam of hunger in her eyes calls to me. I need a release, and if not now with Rikku between my legs, then later when she's asleep courtesy of my own hands and a vision of her inside my head. I already unfasten my belt.

"I don't like this 'maybe' you're pulling on me, so I want to check for myself. C'mon."

"Go ahead," My whole body already tingles when I expose myself to her. I sit down on the bench, with the blanket over my shoulders. Rikku crawls over to me, and my breath catches at the unadulterated greed in her gaze. Her palms on the tops of my thighs spread my legs apart, though at least some of that is of my own will. My fingers comb through her hair. I wait for her to start touching. She delays.

“Tease,” I whisper. My body already throbs for Rikku’s touch.

“Turn about’s fair play.” Rikku’s hand presses against me and slides inside with no resistance. I clench around even this first touch. Clumsy as she is, in this moment Rikku owns my every reaction. “You are soaked. I just want to eat you.”

“Please do.” I sound desperate. I am desperate, and Rikku has at least some inkling of how much I want this. She wields her power over me smugly. Her tongue dances around my most sensitive area, heightening the hyper-aware urgency that starts in my clit and radiates through every nerve. My breath catches, and my moans escape a half-second before I catch them. Then Rikku hones in and focuses on one thing only: prying my control out of my hands bit-by-bit. I'm willing to give to her.

I think about us, how good it’s been, and how much better it was tonight. I think about Rikku’s hands right now, using my ass to pull me into her mouth, and I think about each and every motion her body made earlier, and the fantasies I catch myself having during random times of the day. This is how they all end. My legs shake around her. Rikku takes that as a signal to keep on going. Her hand pumps inside me, and the wet sounds I’m vaguely aware of aren’t the shoopuf moving through the waters.

Rikku pulls away nearly as breathless as me. Her mouth gleams with my juices, and so does the hand she sucks on when she with draws. “I think your 'maybe', might be an understatement,” Rikku whispers.

I lean over and kiss her lips. “You think?”

*

Later, Rikku and I sit together on the bench, her stretched out in front of me, and both of us look out the side of the shoopuf. The occasional barge floats by. The shadows of fiends and fish dart below the surface of the water while pyreflies drift above it. Their illumination occasionally reveals the ruins of cities destroyed long ago by Sin and nature.

“It’s so quiet and peaceful here,” Rikku says, leaning back into me. My hands instinctively clasp around her, and my fingers stroke the line where her scarf meets her skin. “I almost wish this would last forever.”

“It is nice,” I agree, “but it can’t last.”

“I know. We need to be in Guadosalam by tomorrow night. But Paine,” Rikku reaches up to stroke my hand.

“Yes?”

“How is this going to work?”

“How is what going to work?”

“This,” Rikku waves the hand that was touching mine. “In Guadosalam. We won’t be traveling for a while. But it’s not like being in a normal town where we can just go about our business separately. We could…I guess, if you wanted to take care of the interviews while I focused on the technical aspects, but--”

“But you don’t want to.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“It’ll be easier if we collaborate,” Rikku says, “since the Guado know a lot about the Farplane, which will help me when I’m poking around down there, and the technical understanding will help you ask better questions.”

It’s a good, sensible reason. I’d been thinking the same thing myself. Rikku and I worked well together because of our different skills. But even a sensible excuse is still an excuse, and I didn’t believe that Rikku would be so nervous over a mere working arrangement. “Is that why, really?”

“I know we promised to keep all the touchy-feely to the wilderness, but I’ll miss it.”

“We could always go out to the Thunder Plains and calibrate lightning towers,” I joke. I’ll miss it too, the sex least of all. I treasure the easy companionship that always develops when we don't have to prove to ourselves just how not a couple we are. Out alone, the distinction between “friend,” “companion,” and “lover” are irrelevant. Among people, they’re everything.

Rikku giggles at that one. “Calibrating lightning towers could be fun, even if we would be stuck in the rain.”  
“We’d just need to find shelter. Warm each other up.” I run my hands down her side. “I believe we’ve just demonstrated how that could be done.”  
“It’s going to be difficult though,” Rikku says, “pretending.”

I know what she means. My hands pull Rikku close enough to me that her back presses my breasts down and her warmth radiates in me. Still, I say nothing. Confessing will make things complicated for the both of us: friends can amicably part ways when the adventure ends; lovers don’t have that option. Either we will work, and the adventure never ends—quiets maybe, but always remains—or it doesn’t, and I’m back to where I was before I had stepped aboard the Celsius for the first time, and without someone chirpy to grab my hand and pull me towards the next big discovery. I close my eyes and rest my chin atop her head, and let myself relax.

“Paine? You awake?”

I snap back to awareness. “Mostly. It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, we should really turn in.” Rikku fakes a yawn and rolls off my lap and spreads her blanket on the floor. “Care to join me?”

I play at reluctance and sigh, but I crawl into the nest that Rikku has made for us and settle in, and she curls up to me. My arms fit to her again. We haven’t separated since dinner. More and more, I’m perfectly content with that fact. I don’t know how much I want to build my plans around this flutter inside me, but like Rikku, I find maintaining the illusion increasingly difficult, and more and more I wonder and worry about what’s really to fear.

“Good night, Rikku.” My lips touch her forehead.

“Good night, Paine,” Rikku lifts her head and kisses me on the lips. “Paine?”

“Go to sleep, Rikku.” I roll over.

“I will, but I just want you to know that I’m really happy we met. Really happy.”

“Me too,” purposefully trying to sound grouchier than I feel, “but can we deal with how happy we are to have met in the morning?”  
Rikku nods. “I’ll keep you to it. Nighty-night.” And after that, she’s either out instantly, or she pretends to be. I listen to her soft snore as I drift off to sleep and wonder what tangle of malboro tentacles I’ll find myself in come morning.

*

I wake up to the sound of loud bells and the Hypello’s voice calling out sight of the North bank. The sun has just come up over the eastern horizon, but already the river is filled with the boats and skiffs and old fisherman who would laugh at Rikku and I wasting the best time of the day. I give the still soundly sleeping Rikku a nudge and she props up on her elbows, blinking blearily up at me.

“What?”

“We’re almost there.”

“It’s too soon to be morning,” Rikku yawns and curls up against my shoulder. “just a few more hours?”

“We’ll sleep when we reach Guadosalam,” I say, folding up the blankets and putting them back under the benches for the next passengers.

Rikku shakes her head, but starts gathering all of our belongings into the rucksack, and putting her boots back on. “We can hope, but you know the Guado. They’ll insist on an all-day, all-night celebration of our arrival, followed by three days of meetings and introductions, and then maybe we’ll get some shut-eye.”

I smirk. “If they haven’t done us the courtesy of scheduling dialect lessons for us.”

“Exactly! So it’s important that we get plenty of rest now!” She’s a little too perky, even for Rikku. No matter how much we try to go about today like everything is normal, last night marked the start (or ending) of a slow shift between us. “I say once we get off, we stretch our legs for a little bit, and then take a nap at the station.”

I shake my head. I know what delaying tactic she tries to pull, and while it’s tempting to grab a few more nights alone with her, we do have work to do. “Rikku…”

“What? That’s a great plan.”

An idea occurs to me, of how to get Rikku to stop dawdling. “I have a secret.”

That piqued her interest. “Oooh, what kind of secret? A juicy secret?”

“A secret, secret. I haven’t told anyone.” I can’t believe what I’m setting myself up for, but if I’m waiting for a moment, best to just get it over with now. I know, and Rikku needs to know at least.

“Care to tell me?”

“Sure thing.” I pause. “Once we reach Guadosalam.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

I shake my head. “I thought you needed to sleep awhile more first.”

“No, no, I’m awake and ready to go!” She pumps her arm into the air, and then, as she lowers it: “Is it a good secret?”

I pause. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh,” Rikku quiets and goes thoughtful. “Well, maybe, I have a secret for you too.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

Rikku nods and blushes.

The shoopuf walks up onto dry land, and I notice with amusement that the shadow that had swam alongside it during the trip—the one I had mistaken for a large fish—emerges from the water besides in, a quite dingy blue water flan. I tap Rikku on the sleeve and point at it.

“A fiend!”

“I think it’s been swimming alongside the shoopuf the entire trip.” We watch it lurch onto shore, translucent insides half-concealing twigs and pebbles from the river. The shoopuf doesn’t seem disturbed as the flan squelches its way forward and out of our sight.

“Aww, they’re friends.”

“Think its owner is going to be disappointed.” I briefly tell Rikku about the poster for the missing flan.

“Could be, but I think it’s kind of cute.”

The sound of rusting cogs raising the lift signals that it’s time for us to disembark. Rikku jumps on first and offers her hand out. “Let’s go, Paine.”

I don’t need the assistance to board the lift, but I take Rikku’s hands and let her escort me on to the lift. Like my own hands, hers are damp with sweat. We know. We’ve come as close to confession as we can without actually saying the words that close off our final escape, but everything from “companion” and “adventure” to “pretend” “secret” and now “Guadosalam” becomes our code and the message falls into place, obvious even in our willful state of ignorance.

Rikku passes some extra gil to the handlers on the North Bank, and we peer around to find the flan sluggishly oozing next to the Shoopuf.

“That’sh Shushie,” Our shoopuf driver explained when she finds us pointing at the fiend. “She’sh made a friend of the Shoopuf.”

“I’ll say,” Rikku gets antsy. “Well, anyway off to Guadosalam. Trommell and the rest will be waiting for us. Thanks for the lift.”  
I laugh at Rikku’s transparency, and give a final salute wave to the hypello as Rikku practically drags me from the port. She stumbles. Her legs haven’t quite returned to her, but that doesn't stop her from pressing on.

“Careful,” I say, catching her before she falls.

“Thanks. You think this will be okay?”

I look at her, and I’m more confident now than I have been in months—and I hope that the feeling will last long enough to confess. “Everything will be fine. Come on.” I walk off towards Guadosalam.

Rikku skips out ahead of me. “Roger!”


End file.
